


In Consideration of Being a Thief

by failsafe



Category: Princess Bride (1987)
Genre: Background Buttercup/Westley, Background Relationships, Complicated Relationships, Found Family, M/M, Multi, Open to Interpretation, POV Multiple, Possible Polyamory, Post-Canon, possible break up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 14:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: The life you plan for yourself may not be the best long-term plan.





	In Consideration of Being a Thief

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maharetr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharetr/gifts).



> I really hope you enjoy this! Some author's thoughts down in the end-notes, in case you want reassurances first or are curious afterward.

Safe and faraway in a kingdom closer to the sea. This is where they find themselves, the second time they stop to allow the horses their rest. They will dismount for longer this time. They are all tired, and when Fezzik makes his way to a nice-looking tree, braces himself, and makes the long way down to lean back against it, the decision seems to be foregone.

“We'll make camp here tonight,” Westley says, in a tone that speaks of a man used to commanding.

Buttercup is busy for a moment, shaking out her skirts from debris and wrinkles. She had always been accustomed to being a little unkempt, before living in the castle with servants who saw to her beauty more often than she liked, but hours of riding were enough to make anyone self-conscious.

“Look at this!” Inigo exclaims, apparently energized by being back on his feet where everyone else appears tired.

Westley reaches up and rubs at the skin beneath his eye that has gone a little soft with fatigue.

“What is it?” he asks.

“The sky is such a nice shade of gray here,” Inigo says, wholeheartedly believing that there is such a thing. “And those trees – how they reach up for the sky! They are such lovely trees.”

Westley watches Inigo's celebration of nothing at all for a moment. He finishes wiping at the weary shadow beneath his eye, swiping away along is cheek. His face suddenly blossoms into a smile which he turns toward Buttercup.

At first, she isn't looking. After a moment, she catches him looking at her and looks a little too bewildered to have understood.

“What is it?” she asks after the space of a breath, putting forth the effort to understand.

Westley looks upward at the canopy of this patch of woods which are most certainly more hospitable than the terrible Fire Swamp.

“Trees,” he says faintly. “Lovely trees.”

\- - -

_Some days later..._

Traveling at this time was a long, slow process. It is some days later when the air begins to take on a different quality. There is wind where there were only gentle breezes before. Sometimes, the air is sharp and clear and bright, bright blue up high. There is a trace of salt blowing in and clearing away any hint of rot with it.

Fezzik has not known such a place since Vizzini had come along to recruit him. His grip on his horse's reins have tightened enough time that he has reached out to pet her mane and her neck a few times in quiet apology. He glances over at his companion in those moments. There is a part of him that wonders if Inigo would simply prefer it if he went back the way he had come.

He does not want to go back.

No one says a word about putting him back on a ship and sending him off to Greenland, which had not been very nicely green anyway. This land is much better for that. They say nothing for too long sometimes, and his only way of trying to help is to tell jokes and create rhymes. Sometimes they land well, and he is rewarded with a peal of laughter. Other times, they all seem lost in something that seems to have carried over from the last time they had stopped.

Inigo looks out to the horizon. Fezzik knows that he is looking forward to something that comes next. Fezzik does not know what it is. When he sees something a little wan in his face, overshadowing the hope, he knows that Inigo does not truly know what it is either.

-

Somewhere on their journey in a small village that is not quite a fishing village – a bit too far back from the coast – they acquired two tents. Closer to the sea, the days are warmed with a pleasant, happy sunshine, but at night the wind stretches out its fingers and grasps for them. Fezzik feels terribly that his friends likely are even colder than he is.

He knows that Westley is a dreaded pirate, but they had paid for the tents. This is why they only have two, he supposes. Lying next to Inigo, he hears him complain sometimes. Other times, he hears him breathe steadily and sleep soundly. He supposes this has something to do with the fact that he is finally at peace. In the employ of Vizzini, he had often noticed the Spaniard murmuring his practiced preamble to dispatching his father's killer. Fezzik wonders if he will ever forget the words.

Sometimes, on the nights where they make camp in a quiet, still place, Fezzik hears footsteps outside, circling around and pacing and breaking branches.

The first time he had heard these sounds, his heart had bounded its way into a terrible, tense fright. He had not moved, but he had considered doing so. Then, the sounds had passed into nothing, and somehow, he had fallen asleep.

Now, he knows what the sounds are. Sometimes, at night, Westley stands outside the tent he and Buttercup share. He does not say a word on those nights, and he is the only one standing guard, even in this safe country.

\- - -

Buttercup has spent more time alone with Westley since fleeing the castle than they had ever truly managed back on her family's farm. Sometimes, that freedom is ecstatic and gives her cause for great joy. Other times, it feels false and confusing.

They have kept their distance, but they are never apart.

They have spent their nights together, but he has never offered anything but placing a hand or an ear to her heart. Sometimes, it makes her lungs swell with relief. Other nights, like the night before this one, she stares up at the peak of the tent and watches the faint, playing shadows that come from the low-burning embers outside, and she feels her eyes well in a way she had never imagined to know again.

Not that time, but in days before, he as caught this latter reaction. He has propped himself upon his elbow beside her. He has run his fingers through her hair so tenderly that even she can see the beauty of the golden strands in a way that has eluded and confounded her all her life. He has asked her what is wrong, what he can do, but the thought of answering the question tempers that answer into something very much like, _“Nothing. Nothing. Westley, please, go back to sleep.”_ And then her fingers will touch his shorter golden hair, too.

On this night, she has gathered the courage to approach a subject which she has not even lit upon before.

Earlier in the day, she had heard the conclusion of a conversation between Westley and his partner in planning, Inigo Montoya. She knows so little about the other man, but seeing how Westley carries himself around him, how he takes his arm just below the elbow and grasps firmly, not letting go until this final assurance is made, she knows that there are things about Westley she has not come to know at all. “We'll be there by tomorrow,” Westley had promised Inigo.

Buttercup already has a knit in her brow as she sits, doing the minimum to work the tangles from her loose hair, on a log positioned by the spot they had settled on for a fire. The soft bristles of the brush run over and over her palm and the hair held in it.

“Westley,” she says, in the midst of her quiet work, “where are we going?”

Westley looks around at her at the sound of his name. He is leaned against a rock, only a few paces away, tending to the health of his sword as she tends to the health of her hair.

“The sea,” he says simply.

“Yes,” Buttercup says. She stills her hand, brush touching down in the opposite palm and perhaps causing another tangle as it settles into the soft cushion of hair. “I had been able to gather that,” she says. She knows that she is a silly, foolish girl who has hardly seen any of the world at all until these last days, but she has ridden her horse farther than most people care to know. She is still riding.

“Then why do you ask?” Westley asks with a gentle, subtle lifting of his eyebrows.

Buttercup levels her sharpest gaze at him. Had she not spent an eternity locked away in a beautiful, perfect prison, learning to listen to every whispered word to protect any shred that was left of the girl she had been and the woman she had been forced to become? But how could he know that?

“I ask because I wish to know _why_ we are headed toward the sea.”

“I explained this to you,” Westley says, still visibly confused. It frustrates her, but with her own confusion, how can she blame him for it? “I became the Dread Pirate Roberts,” he says, almost as if it is a lilt to the kinds of songs that is crew might sing, drunk and alone and rocking on the waters. “I must return to see to my affairs.” He glances away, somewhere – somewhere away from her.

“And you thought to say nothing? It's been nearly three weeks,” she says, pity and quiet anger warring for some sway over her tone.

“I simply assumed you understood,” he says. “I'm sorry,” he adds, after a moment and a look back at her. She sees the firelight in his eyes, and she – at least – doesn't feel the flames of fury licking at her anymore.

-

The following morning, they come upon a place where there are certainly more people. It has steadily become warmer in their travels, despite the cool nights, and it has never been more apparent than when Buttercup can hardly move as they dismount their horses and lead them up to a guarded gate. Westley seems to have this particular passage taken care of for them too. Buttercup holds securely onto her horse's reins. In these days, she has become hers, stolen as she might have been.

Buttercup had been stolen from by her former owner, too.

They eat together. They work their way through a market that has a differently enticing smell than the clean, almost vacant air from the sea. All the while, she feels torn until, finally, listening to Westley make arrangements to sell the horses, to a man with a stable. However rude it might be, she walks up to him with heavy, determined footfalls, and interjects.

“No!” she says, clearly alarming both Westley and the stableman.

“I...” Westley says, but then he holds up an appeasing hand to the man with whom he had been speaking. “Excuse us for a moment,” he says without turning away completely. He does simply move a little closer to Buttercup so he can lower his voice. “What is it?” he asks, earnestly searching her eyes.

She searches his back, and it is as if she has finally found something in them that she doesn't like. She doesn't know where exactly it is located, or what it is, but she speaks decisively.

“I'm not coming with you,” she says aloud. She starts to move away from him, already taking hold of her mare's reins and bracing to mount her. “She is mine, and I... don't know if—” Then she glances at Inigo and Fezzik. Fezzik in particular seems to be looking at her, disbelieving a little sad. She chooses not to say the words that were on the tip of her tongue, and they die with the next breath as she rides away.

-

The time that passes when she has reached the outer wall of this fortified place seems to go by slowly for a time. Then, in no time at all, she finds she isn't alone. The horse secured nearby, she sits with her back to the wall, her knees to her chest, and her skirts neatly wrapped. She looks up at the mountain of a man who has walked all the way here.

“Lady,” he says, and she realizes that he has so rarely even attempted her name.

“Fezzik,” she acknowledges, because she has never come up with another name for him.

“Please come back with me?” he asks, waiting no time at all to broach the subject. He reaches down to offer his hand to her.

Without much hesitation, Buttercup reaches for Fezzik's hand and lets him help her up.

“I'm sorry,” she says when she is on her feet. He frowns at her. “I promise I have endured... far worse than a few months without him,” she says. She glances the way she had come. She looks at how, in spite of the crowds gone to market and working and playing, she is fairly alone in this little patch of grass – alone with Fezzik and a horse.

“Then you will be waiting when we return?” he asks.

 _We,_ Buttercup catches.

“You're going with them, too?” she asks in turn.

Fezzik gives a gesture that seems to massive to be a shrug but which must have been.

“I have nowhere else to go,” he admits.

Buttercup gives him a look of concern, mind pulled away from herself. She has already escaped a lifetime of terrible, terrified loneliness once. She does not want to watch another seem so determined that he might suffer the same fate.

“Besides,” he says, and she feesl the relief wash over her as his tone changes. “It sounds like fun. Being on a boat with people I know. Fighting again. Having a boss whose... evil isn't so bad.”

“Isn't so bad,” Buttercup echoes, scoffing a little. Somehow, he has hit right at the root of one of the fraying roots she feels somewhere at the bottom of something she had believed so, so truly.

“They aren't so bad,” Fezzik agrees, and then he is bowing his head enough, making a very attentive look to meet her eyes.

\- - -

It is with a heavy heart that Westley goes about making the rest of the preparations. At Buttercup's parting words, he had made some effort to insist that the stableman find some honorable use for the horses he must sell. He had never taken the stableman for anything but an honest businessman, and he had learned the hard way to never blindly trust, but by the time he left he left the stable, he had been sure that there was some healthy dose of fear in the stableman's heart if he should think to cross his express wishes. It had been the best he could do.

Westley notices, as they are carrying the packs of supplies onto the familiar ship, that Inigo looks rather pensive, too. Walking in step with him and checking to make sure he has sure footing when they reach the deck, he puts on a brave smile that only shows so much of what he is reckoning with. He misses his mask, but it belongs on the face of Inigo Montoya now. He reaches up to rub his cheek at the ghost of it.

“Cheer up,” he commands. “They are safer back on the shore, and I will not let you return anything less than successful.” Then he clears his throat roughly as a few members of the brand new crew finish bringing aboard. some of the heavier sacks and crates.

“It is only that I do not wish to want someone _back_ again,” Inigo says. On the deck, he frees himself of the large satchel of citrus fruits and stands tall. Westley searches his eyes, and he does not need to ask about that to which he refers. He opens his mouth to reply when heavy, heavy footsteps approach. Looking at the loading planks, he notes that Fezzik's plodding step utterly masks Buttercup, who is quiet and light.

“Fezzik!” Inigo says, with great relief. He reaches out as soon as it is safe – or a safe as it will ever feel with such a large man, shifting his weight confidently on the vessel – and grasps his friend by the arm. “I thought we had lost you.”

“I went back for the girl,” Fezzik says proudly. He is cleared out of the way for Westley to see Buttercup move toward him. She has changed clothes, skirts no longer swishing about her legs. She carries a dress over her arm and a rough, leather satchel at her shoulder. Westley might have told her that such things were unnecessary on a _pirate ship_ , but they were so few, and for a moment he cannot speak.

When he does, it is...

“You came back.”

“Fezzik came for me,” she repeats, redundantly. She bows her head just a little, but it is probably just to be sure of her footing. When she looks back up at him, he sees the pride and posture of the haughty girl who had once commanded him so, so easily, before he had ever known command for himself. The smile she wears, however, had been something he had known to come after. “... I will always come for you,” she swears, a little rueful and a little brave.

“So we are,” Westley says, smiling a little more generously than hers invites.

“So we are,” she agrees. Then she rocks on her toes in a very feminine way, whatever her clothes might otherwise suggest. She looks down at them, and he sees that it has nothing to do with a lack of confidence. She gathers her breath and looks at him once more. “I will come with you upon three conditions.”

Westley raises his eyebrows, but not for long. He truly considers, for just a moment, whether he wants to have her conditions at all. He studies her beauty. He considers that he no longer has any mask to conceal his intentions, his identity, or to lay claim to one greater than his own – Westley, a farm boy, with many more years of pain and experience to his credit. Finally, he cocks his head back and looks at her a little skeptically, but openly, too.

“What are your conditions?” he agrees to bargain, a little wry. They are all but accepted already, but he needs to hear them.

“First,” she begins, “I... receive my own quarters on your ship,” she says.

He nods without hesitation. He thinks of the warmth shared between them in their tent. He thinks of warmth not especially shared. He thinks of the desire and the reluctance and all that lay between. He has nodded anyway, because until or if they cross an expanse that apparently exists – still – between them, he has no grounds for argument.

“Secondly,” she adds, satisfied with the first, “you will not _give me_ orders.”

Westley frowns. For a moment, he forgets himself again. This time, it isn't to her authority. Instead, it is to Inigo's.

“You have never sailed before. Not on purpose. And you have never done... any of the things which are the charge of his vessel,” he explains quickly, a counterargument.

Inigo looks a little surprised and lets them know that he has tracked their conversation quite well.

“Nor have I,” he interjects.

Westley sees Buttercup look surprised, then decisively grateful. She looks back to Westley expectantly.

At least then, Westley has the answer.

“Your orders will come from our captain,” he says, nodding to Inigo.

He sees Buttercup begin to look a little haughtily skeptical. He lifts a hand halfway in appeasement.

“It isn't because of your birth or because of your worth as a member of the crew,” he explains. “It is simply that on the sea, there needs to be someone in charge – all the time.”

Buttercup's eyes are not still. Instead, they are darts of bright sky lancing around and looking for her own understanding. It dawns quite quickly and without doubt.

“Then I suppose my last condition is not simply for you but for our captain as well,” she says. She turns slightly, lowering her things and setting them aside on the deck. She laces her hands behind her back as she leans ever so slightly toward Inigo.

“What can I do for you?” Inigo asks, quite sincerely. Westley considers whether this is a trait he will need to advise him about later but soon decides it is too early to tell.

“You can teach me,” she says.

“Teach you what?” Inigo asks with polite, attentive interest.

“How to be a pirate,” she says very softly. Then she takes up her things and nods quickly, without waiting for a response, and carries them to find the lower deck, at least.

-

Westley cedes his Captain's Quarters to Inigo. Some of his things remain there. When he enters to spea with him, privately, he considers a time when they won't. So far, he has not quite been able to picture all those things which he would like being taken with him, on the back of a new horse, and held in a farmhouse in Florin. It occurs to him, sometimes, that going back to Florin may never be an option.

-

It does not take long to mend the tether that had pulled him so far back to find Buttercup in the land they had both called home once. Buttercup is indelible, somehow. She has her own quarters, but she often comes to his.

At first, it is for private lessons in swordplay. The first time he accidentally hurts her and her blood stains first her shirt and then his hand and sleeve, he nearly gives up on the pursuit altogether. He sees her cry from the pain of mending and healing it, but she will not let him give up.

-

He catches Inigo at the prow of the ship, more than once. At first, he lets him have his silent rest. After all, in spite of the fact that all the crew believe that Inigo Montoya's name always has been and ever shall be the _Dread_ Pirate Roberts, Westley must constantly be at his ear. Westley must constantly advise him silently – a look in the eye, a touch of the hand and the arm or back, or a clever gambit carrying out in open words. For a while, he does not suppose that Inigo would like to be disturbed by him at this time.

Finally, one night, his strict sense of judgment leaves him to other devices. Perhaps it is the wine. Perhaps it is needing to speak with someone else when he cannot quite stop feeling slick blood on his hand, years after that first wave of revulsion had subsided.

“What is it?” he asks. He looks upward, well beyond the icon of a voluptuous woman that adorns the nose of the ship and the elegant flourish of wood that is her constant shelter and companion. Beyond them, there is darkness. Beyond that, there are pinpricks of light in a tapestry beyond the reach of men's fingers. “Stargazing?”

“Perhaps,” Inigo replies, his tone warm and undisturbed. He does not look at Westley immediately. Westley waits for some time, thinking that perhaps this is the only word he will get out of him. It is a surprisingly polite way to refuse a conversation, but _perhaps_ 'surprisingly polite' has always been a way he might have described the man standing before him. “Sometimes, I think I am looking for my father.”

“Yes?” Westley asks, not quite sure what else to proffer or say.

“Sometimes, I think he is gone completely.” Inigo braces his hand at the railing and looks down into the lapping, fathomless depth below. It seems to represent the kind of featureless hell of obscurity that Inigo so clearly imagines for that possibility. Then, the man lifts his eyes back up to the stars, clear and bright no matter what the mask might do to him. “Other times, I know he is with me while he is somewhere else. Up there.”

“Up there?” Westley asks, prompting more of this reverently even though he is not so foolish as to have never hard some talk of heaven.

“Beyond our comprehension,” Inigo replies confidently. He finally looks down to meet Westley's eyes. Westley feels exposed when he sees the edges of the mask on another's face. He clears his throat softly, but he doesn't look away. He tilts his head and feels that the wind that slowly drives them along has the same way with his hair, a little.

“You said you know he is with you,” he half-repeats.

“Yes,” Inigo says with a nod and a smile that carries wonderful news.

Westley's brow furrows but only a little.

“I never thought to miss my parents in such a way,” he admits.

“Do you not miss them?” Inigo says, not asking the questions of _how_ but only those that cut even deeper than that. Of course he does.

“I do, but it was... not unexpected. That is the only explanation I have for myself. Either that, or I was always more accustomed to death than I knew,” he explains. He tries to steer the conversation to something a little more practical. “That is the one concern I have about this life I have chosen for you.” He averts his eyes by glancing down at a splinter of wood he had felt without feeling its sting. He picks it away and smooths over what remains with a thumbnail.

“What is that?” Inigo asks with no reluctance to be instructed. He would gladly accept instruction from Inigo, too, even now. He thinks that is why he chose him.

“I fear that you are too kind,” he explains, his lips stretching into a smile that he cannot help.

“I fear that you are kinder than you think you are,” Inigo replies. He has spent so much time with Fezzik that he is prone to such responses, but when he is alone, they are ever so much sharper than anything Fezzik would dare.

“Please,” Westley insists. “Do not make me make good on your honorable defeat – back when we met, I chose to let you go,” he reminds.

“I shall never forget,” Inigo promises. He lifts his hand in a loose fist, up to the left side of his chest, gently touching where his beating heart hides.

“Can you give me an example?” Westley asks, just as they lapse into silence – regarding each other with thoughtful looks that only, almost mirror the other.

“An example of...?” Inigo asks.

“Sorry,” Westley says, for there were too many topics on the table. “An example of when you knew he was with you.”

“The day I needed you,” Inigo announces. It had not been that long ago, but it has already been consigned to a history that is as firm and sure as laws that are written, bent, broken, and revered. Westley opens his mouth to ask the question, but it is unnecessary because Inigo continues. “I could not find you. I heard you cry out in agony, and I knew it must be you. I searched, and we searched, and we came up with nothing. Then, I asked him.” The Spaniard smiles a mysterious smile that Westley knows does not bear prying. He would never dream to ask, but he feels it in the place where he holds a mystery, too. “I asked him, and I found you,” Inigo finishes.

Westley bows his head, out of respect and lack of any notion as to what the correct response is. The previous Dread Pirate Roberts had not prepared him for this. He nods simply, and inclines himself to turn away. “Goodnight, Inigo Montoya,” he says, fondly. Then, he walks away, the words leaving him warmer than wine.

\- - -

_Quite some time later..._

Inigo Montoya has learned much, and he has learned it quickly. The rocking of the ship, the long days out at sea – they quickly become normal to him. After all, he must find a new way of life that suits him. The one that had raised him is finished and gone.

They have come to port once with their spoils and only a few drops of blood spilled. The few that were shed to not bother him. Making a life of revenge had meant that there was a certain amount of bloodshed that he would never escape. There is a new crew aboard the ship. A second set of men now know his new name. They have not been long out over the dark, rocking sea, but it is long enough that – after their first success, a rich nobleman's ship which had flatly surrendered to a man – Inigo, the Dread Pirate Roberts, declares an informal celebration. After all, there is little that would persuade Inigo Montoya that it was not a good time to drink. Eating and merriment are only happy, optional elements which he might have learned to do without.

Only, perhaps it is different for _the Dread Pirate Roberts_ , because as they sit around the fire hearth at all edges and corners of the galley, he hardly takes a sip of that liquid warmth. Well, that is not quite true. For him, a little liquor in the veins is nearly an every day, sometimes even all day occurrence. Still, there is no sense of unsteadiness or wild abandon as he watches them. He sees their faces and the way they share laughter and reminiscence of the time just gone. He notices, in particular, the three people who have not left him during all this time. Fezzik is often so modest when it comes to drinking, though surely he could guzzle down their whole supply before it harmed him. Inigo notices that he seems happy and only that. Buttercup has an air of confidence about her that only seems to have grown over time. It had seemed haughty when it seemed to have come from nothing, but she has put effort into learning the ways of the sea as he has. He doesn't know, but he supposes it might be because she has known captivity now, has known loss and a lack of control. He cannot blame any person for wanting those things back, and if it takes joining the crew of a pirate ship, he cannot refuse even as beautiful a girl as that.

His gaze falls on Westley last. Now he calls him by that name regularly, and it still does not quite fit his face or frame. It sounds lighter than he is, or lighter than he has become – a storm called a breeze. The weight seems to level off his shoulders, each time Inigo learns something new or convinces him that he is a little closer to leaving his post, but lately there is something heavy about that, too.

Westley sits forward on a bench and appears as if he is trying to slouch but having a tough time of it. Inigo can tell he is surveying, eying each of these men and sizing up their usefulness, their loyalty, and their willingness to do what must be done. He holds a drink in his hand, but Inigo wonders if he has even taken a sip of it. When he feels the little impulse in his feet to walk over and see, he decides not to be so presumptuous and instead take his leave.

He glances toward Westley once more, wondering if it is pirate custom to bid the crew a good-night or if it is showing a little too much of the wrong kind of warm feeling. He closes his eyes, rights his course, and climbs to make his way to the captain's quarters.

-

Inigo has readied himself for sleep. One of the best things about the ship he'd found was, when at last the time came to rest, the rocking of the vessel that sometimes threatened to make one ill became a lulling movement. It was like being back in the arms of someone who cared to see one to the land of forgetful and fanciful dreams, just for a moment, just before the deep, dark, blank peace of sleep.

Inigo's eyes came open. He heard the slight rattling at the door of his quarters. His hand had found sword hilt before he could put a clear thought together. A moment after that, he had quietly risen to his feet.

“Who's there?” he asked, calm rather than afraid.

Pale hands show themselves in surrender, followed by a young man dressed in a warm, ruddy top and pants that are not quite the finest black that could be found. He knows that this is a concession to him, too – trying to make sure he looks to be nothing of the man he had been before, for a while.

“It's Westley,” Westley announces, quite redundantly. Inigo might have known that movement anywhere. He hopes for Westley's sake that this is not a curse he has instilled in many people. He thinks the best chance for that hope is that most others have not engaged him in swordplay and won.

“Yes, I see,” Inigo says. He moves his wrist elegantly and replaces the blade where it belonged in times of peace. He is still standing on his feet and waits for the space of a breath or two, giving Westley a moment to report. When it doesn't come, he wonders what he might have come here to accomplish.

“I haven't forgotten the way to my new bed,” Westley reassures him with a gentle nod that does not quite seem to match the words.

“You haven't,” Inigo half-repeats, tilting his head quizically in a way that causes his dark, loosed hair to move across his shoulder.

“Afraid not,” Westley says. He glances down, and Inigo thinks he remains in his sights the whole time. It is so casual, easy, that it is difficult to track without reasonable cause for suspicion. Perhaps those are the spirits he had managed to imbibe talking.

“Is there something wrong?” he decides to ask at length.

“No,” Westley says quickly. He comes closer, his fingers brushing across the edge of a dressing table with an ornately framed mirror. Perhaps it would have seemed an absurd extravagance for a ship tossing and turning on the sea, up and down the coast, but Inigo understands now that the appearance of the Dread Pirate Roberts is most of the thing that any power he does or doesn't wield. “At least, nothing worth mentioning,” he adds.

Inigo's attention perks up.

“Perhaps you should mention the unmentionable then,” he suggests.

“It would not be polite.”

“Since when has that stopped a pirate?” Inigo counters. It is not quite like the rhyming game he plays with Fezzik sometimes. It is also, while different in tenor, not entirely dissimilar.

“Touche,” Westley says, with a smile much too big for the word if not for their history.

“I challenge you, my friend. Keep... your captain entertained on this cool night.”

Westley raises his eyebrows abruptly.

“Really?” he asks.

It is then that Inigo realizes what he has done, or might have done, and wonders if it is all a misunderstanding between them. He isn't sure – for a moment – what the outcome will be. It is a misuse of his wrist, a weakening in his grip, feeling his blade fall away. He is vulnerable.

Westley doesn't seize upon it as viciously as he could have, and Inigo knows what kind of viciousness this man is capable of inflicting. He is grateful.

“I only ask because I understand I am not as charming and adept as I might like to think in these areas,” he confesses.

Inigo's lips part slightly for words that do not quite come.

“You could learn,” he eventually settles on. He tries not to wince.

“I'm sure I could,” Westley says, approaching him with an indulgent smile.

Before Inigo changes his mind, he sits down on the edge of the bed and pats a hand's full distance away beside him. Westley obeys the suggestion easily, leaning back on the heels of his hands and stretching a little, at ease.

“Is this the part where—” Westley begins to ask, but Inigo looks at him and cannot bear it. He gives him a very slightly hurt look, and Westley picks up on it and stops.

“Is there a _part where_ we come together to discuss... what might have been?” Inigo asks.

Westley frowns deeply.

“I'm afraid, dear man, I do not know what you mean.”

“What I mean is if you are prepared to discuss whether I am indeed dear to you or ever could have been,” Inigo says, bracing himself. Whatever authority he has, he could not exercise it over one of the few people left in the world whom he loves.

“Could have been,” Westley scoffs. As it draws Inigo's eyes, only for a moment, it is his only response. “You see,” he continues, “I'm afraid... my care for you has only deepened. It is not a possibility, let alone a lost one. Otherwise, I would not have given my life to you, now would I?” Westley asks, making a point. Quite well, actually.

“I should not ask you to give your life for me,” Inigo replies.

“No, and you didn't. I freely gave it. I had every choice, and I made one,” Westley replies, as if it is the easiest thought in the world – one with no weight at all. After a moment, Westley frowns. “You look as if I might have betrayed you,” he remarks.

“Have you?” Inigo asks. Part of him hopes the question will make Westley proud.

“I have not,” Westley replies clearly.

“Then the only betrayal is the presumption that I would want anyone to die for me,” Inigo says. He looks down at the space between his knees and follows the lines of the planks that make up the floor. “After my father, I never wanted to care for someone so much that I would want them _back_ when they passed,” he explains. “I have not done a very good job thus far.”

“Who said anything about dying?” Westley says in that sly, world-wise way that he shouldn't have earned just yet.

Inigo is not sure when his hand braced just above Westley's knee. He does not know when shared respect and a working relationship became their lips lightly touching and then touching less lightly. It is a start, but it seems like it cannot last. It does, for a moment and another moment still. He does not know how long it will or if it will be snatched away. Still, he finds a way to feel a little more of Westley's skin, beneath the ruddy fabric first. Then, curious and calloused fingers brush lower. He hears broken words caught in Westley's throat, though some of them manage to be spoken. He wonders what the other words might have been, but some things were bound to get lost along the way to becoming a thief.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to tag this as best I could. I wanted to do something that worked with your prompt but post-canon because it is hard for me to mess with the classic tonality and lovability of the original. I tried to write a story that was about found-family and that ultimately led to a place where Inigo and Westley would find each other as something of a more intimate bond. However, it was hard for me to just ignore the through-line of Westley and Buttercup's relationship. There were several reasons for this, including the fact that I just feel so contrite for my first-discovered-slash adolescent habit of writing the girls out quietly and conveniently without ever really letting them be people. 
> 
> However, on a more meta and specifically-related-to-this-narrative level, in doing some vague, brainstormy research prior to writing, I found several different little quotes and suggestions that Westley/Buttercup was kind of intended as a parody or satire of True Love. I feel like it must be less-so in the movie than it is in the original book, but I read a lot about how it is actually a textual and authorially intended idea that Westley and Buttercup are in love with the idea of each other but when it comes down to being together they really don't get along that well. There was even something that (maybe, my recollection may falter) the author might have said something along the lines that after some time when Westley and Buttercup had been together for a while and her beauty started to fade that Westley would tire of her. I found this sort of misogynistic and mean, so I decided to try and do something that could be taken one of two ways and that was also far more charitable to Westley. 
> 
> First, I wanted to couch anything romantic in a slightly more grounded, found-family narrative because I'm bad at writing straight romance with no context. I'm sorry if that is annoying or bloated for what you wanted! Secondly, I read through your full DA Letter, even about stuff I had no knowledge of, and I noticed that you asked for poly in one thing if not in this. I wanted to create a narrative, in that case, that could _either_ be read as an amicable break-up or drifting apart _or_ a gradually-developing open relationship as the characters themselves grow. I kind of felt like that this lent itself to the idea that what Westley went through in his time away made him a very different person who might have sought after some things he found he could no longer manage. Then, finally, in finding that he has this connection to Inigo, I was hoping that maybe it would show that Westley isn't just shallow and capricious. Instead, I was hoping it would show that maybe after being dragged into a life of fairly skimmed-over violence that he finds some kind of solace in the kind of person Inigo has managed to be through everything. In rewatching the film for this fic, I couldn't help but be taken with how Inigo is almost casually spiritual and often engages in magical thinking, and I feel like that Westley's turn of phrase might indicate that there is a part of him that would be quite taken with that. 
> 
> I sincerely hope that I avoided anything that would make this not sit well with you. I really wanted to show a messy tangle of relationships in this, and I hope it doesn't read like I wanted to go a different direction than you wanted me to or that it meandered. If it did, I apologize, and I hope there's still some kernel of enjoyment in there for you. Happy Yuletide!


End file.
